Sunday, March 17, 2013

"Smart" is a privilege, not a disadvantage

I'd been wanting to talk about this for a while, even before Rachel's post for The Social Justice League. Going from a grade school where we were told none of us was better than the person in the next seat, to a high school where tracking was taken to new and self-esteem shattering levels, I don't put much faith in "smartness." Of course I value intelligence (my definition of intelligence is close to Ozy's ), but not"smartness" as an identity based on IQ and SAT scores, or where one went to college -- which is heavily, if not entirely, tethered to class.